Desuetude
by Frost Deejn
Summary: A "Loyalty" post-ep. There are rules about how you can behave with your partner. Now suddenly those rules aren't there...


Disclaimer: I didn't create _Law & Order: Criminal Intent_.

Author's note: As much as I'll miss Goren and Eames, I loved that ambiguous goodbye on the show. I resisted the temptation to add to the glut of romantic "Loyalty" post-eps for weeks, but I've finally given in. Hopefully there's something here that distinguishes this from the others enough to make it worth the read.

Desuetude

Alex Eames, until yesterday a detective on the NYPD Major Case Squad, was sitting at her table updating her résumé when the inevitable doorbell rang. When she saw who was on the other side, she immediately opened it.

Former detective Bobby Goren stood at her threshold.

He tentatively met her eyes. "You quit," he stated, explaining what he was doing there.

"I resigned in protest," she countered.

He shook his head to himself. "Maybe you can...take it back?"

"Even if I could, I wouldn't," she insisted. They looked at each other for a second, then she stepped back. "Come inside."

He did, and turned toward her when she closed the door. His eyes rested on a point of the carpet halfway between their feet. "Why did you do it?"

Alex had known her resignation would upset him more than his dismissal, which was why she hadn't told him about it. She wondered who had. Nichols, probably.

She'd shed tears when she fired him. She wasn't going to now. Her voice was even and firm. "It was the right thing to do."

"The right thing woulda been staying as captain. Major Case needs you," Bobby argued.

"Bobby..." She took a deep breath. "I won't be a part of any club that wouldn't have you as a member."

That got him to laugh.

Then they both fell quiet, thinking about the goodbye at the station: the hug, the kiss. Of course, it was just on the cheek, but still...

"It was my choice, and it was the right one," she concluded.

He reluctantly nodded because he couldn't think of anything else to say. "Okay."

Neither looked at the other for a moment, then Alex said, "Have a seat. We should talk."

They sat side by side on her couch. Another long moment passed as they both tried to think of ways to bring up what was on their minds. "So...we're not partners anymore," Bobby said.

"Yeah," she agreed. "Which is gonna take some getting used to. You've been...you've been my partner for so long."

He nodded. _You're all I have left, _he wanted to say.

"And that's not something - the...relationship we've developed over those years - isn't something that's just going to go away because we're not working together anymore," Alex continued. "I mean, _if _you can forgive me for firing you," she added half-jokingly.

"There's nothing to forgive."

Silence descended again. They felt like there was an elephant in the room that neither was sure the other could see.

They were partners. There were rules.

_Were._

"So we're good?" Alex asked.

"Yeah. We're good."

She shifted toward him, finally looked him in the eyes. "And what about you?"

He blinked, a little surprised by the question and a little disconcerted by her eyes on him. "I'll be fine," he replied, not sure if she meant professionally or personally. "What about you?" He hadn't needed to ask. He knew she would always land on her feet. But he needed to say something.

"As long as you are," she forced herself to say.

"I will be as long as I have you," he responded.

"Good." She leaned forward, balancing herself with a hand on his chest, and placed a kiss on his cheek.

Her lips lingered there.

Bobby closed his eyes. He was sure Alex must have felt his heart pounding, or at least heard the catch in his breath. This was the woman he'd admired quietly for years. It was a bittersweet irony that he never would have gotten to know her and develop feelings for her if they hadn't been partnered up, but because they were partners they could never be together. And now her lips were on his cheek, and her hand on his chest.

Without thinking about it, he covered her hand with his. "Eames, you don't know..." He stopped himself before he finished telling her that she didn't know how many times he'd wished he could touch her like this.

She removed her lips from his cheek and drew back. "I don't know what?"

He didn't answer. His eyes flicked from her eyes to her lips, then he forced them back. But she'd seen it.

"What your partnership has meant to me." Yeah. That seemed safe.

She glanced down to where his hand still held hers. It didn't make sense. "I've always...No. At first, I thought that all you cared about was doing your job and catching bad guys."

He recalled her saying something like that in one of their earliest cases together. Why would she have said that unless she'd thought about his devotion to his job, and maybe wondered how he felt about her? Had that been before or after she wrote the letter requesting a transfer? The first time he'd ever seen tears in her eyes had been when she was forced to reveal the existence of that letter on the stand. "That was true for a long time. And you helped me do that. And then I figured out I couldn't do it without you."

She nodded. "We made a good team." There was perhaps a slight trace of hurt or wistfulness in her voice.

"It was more than that," he said. "You have to know that."

Alex thought over the times throughout their partnership when she'd read more in his words, eyes, and actions than the simple trust of a partner: amusement and fondness when she made a snide remark, appreciation of her looks when she use them to rope in a suspect, admiration when they worked seamlessly together to pull off a convoluted trap to elicit a confession, relief when they survived dangerous situations, even on occasion jealousy when she showed interest in other men, and longing after cases where love was a factor. "What I know...is that I'm lucky to have been your partner."

"So what now?" he asked after a moment's speechlessness. "What are we now?"

"We're still partners. Always, Bobby. The only thing that's changed is what that means. The rules we have to follow. The rules we don't have to follow anymore."

With that he finally found the courage to kiss her. She kissed him back.

Maybe it was a mistake, they both knew, but it was one they had both been determined to make from the moment he walked in.


End file.
